Sep 18 The Zen Buddhist Nuclear Weapons Expert in Trump's White House

The senior White House National Security Council official who focuses on weapons of mass destruction is an ordained Buddhist chaplain -- one who has no compunction about using American force for the greater good.

The official, Christopher Ford, said in a recent interview his spirituality rarely comes up in his career and that he believes it's beneficial to come at policy questions from a more unique background. But still, some people look at him a little funny sometimes.

"It's like I'm a weird zoo animal," Ford told Code and Dagger founder Lee Ferran for a report for The Daily Beast. "Like, 'Hey, come over here, check out the Buddhist.'"

Ford, whose position as special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation puts him at the center of policy discussions on thorny WMD issues like Iran and North Korea, said that in the latter's case, the Trump administration is applying a "maximum pressure" strategy.

"Right now we're kind of in a race to see if we can pull enough levers to slow down the development of the threat and create enough pressure on them in ways that haven't been done before" before the U.S. gets to a "really uncomfortable binary choice," he said.

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